Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Obesity and Emotional Eating - Why Weight Loss Does Not Depend Only on the Diet

Very often, weight loss diets don't work and that's not because they are inefficient, but because the people following them cannot learn to put their emotional hunger under control. Have you ever confronted yourself with the irresistible crave to eat when you were depressed or upset? Did you ever act on that crave and filled yourself with things like sweets, ice cream, and/or pizza? This being the case, it's no wonder that diets aren't effective if you can't control your own feelings and give into them by literally stuffing yourself with food. You have to realize that emotional eating is not a reaction to actual hunger. You don't actually need food. However, your emotions and your mind-set, act like a stimulant - therefore eating becomes a necessity in the attempt to suppress all kinds of feelings. If you want to change this destructive habit, you must first understand what activates it.

The most common culprit that triggers emotional eating is the feeling that you're not appreciated by the people around you. When you feel that people don't reward you for your achievements you go and dive into a bucket of ice cream thinking that you deserve it for what you've accomplished. Another common emotional trigger is resentment. When you are angry with yourself or with somebody else and the first thing you do is to eat something, you're then eating with resentment. And sometimes you can eat a lot, only due to this one feeling that you have. And the truth is that the more you continue eating, the more resentful you may become - which will throw you in a long spiral of continuous eating. Yet another common trigger for emotional eating is the felling that there's nothing in your powers in order for you to change your life: you can't travel; you can't do the activities you desire; you can't make new friends, etc. In other words, you lack activity in your life, so you find a good compensation in eating. For this reason, you might feel that food can diversify your life and bring another perspective into it but don't forget that it's not filling up only your time; it's also filling up your body.

So if you ever start a new weight loss program and you get bored along the way, or if you get the feeling of being unappreciated for your efforts, you have to be aware and not to fall into the trap of emotional eating.

Fight obesity by putting a stop to emotional eating. Click the link to pick the right diet plan for you.